Doing Good | Giving Back Through Kiva

In our Celebrating What Matters series in December, we talked about ways to enjoy the holiday season. We shared ideas for hosting parties with healthful foods and drinks, how to have a calm holiday, and how to celebrate community. We even offered tips for keeping your fur friends happy and healthy. And I invited you to participate! I loved all of your advice, tips, and stories. As promised, I selected four participants to receive $25 donations to their favorite charity or organization.

I’m pleased to share that Kate Fagan, Marylou Riday, Jennifer Dimond, and Ashley Offret were the winning participants. We made donations in their names to The Diaper Fund, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Hope Acts, and Planned Parenthood. I love that two of the recipients serve on the board of their chosen organization. Kate works with The Diaper Fund, and Jennifer for Hope Acts, a community-building organization in Portland, Maine that offers “hospitality, hope, and healing for all people.”

Big thanks to all of our participants for their holiday tips and advice to help us feel good—and their commitment to doing good, as well, through their own work and the organizations they support. As Shari Arison said, “If we want to see positive change in the world, then we need to connect to goodness.”

Giving Back in 2016

It’s just this goal that we had in mind when we made our own commitment to Kiva.org back in 2015. Of course I love our everyday work of helping you celebrate what matters by sharing special gifts with your favorite people. But the only thing better than celebrating what matters is creating more reasons to celebrate. That’s why we decided to donate 10% of our profits to support women’s education and entrepreneurship. We’re helping women all over the world to achieve their dreams, and that’s something we’re proud to celebrate.

In 2016, we made 70 loans, totaling $2,750. This brings our total amount lent to over $6,000. Our goal for 2017 is to make 100 loans and bring our total over $10,000. Thank you for helping us to help women grow their businesses and go to school.

Would you like to join our Kiva team? If you’re already a member of Kiva, it’s so simple to join us and increase our impact! Simply visit our team page and click the “Request to Join” button. Then when you make your loans to support women’s education and business, you can count those loans toward our team’s impact during checkout.

About us

When she isn’t wrapping up lip balms in the bride’s favorite flavor or tying bright bows to match an event’s theme, Emily is helping brides and their favorite people to create unique hashtags. Read more…